Jean Vanier Quotes

I'm like a recovering perfectionist. For me it's one day at a time.

The best way to come to terms with anything that is out of harmony is never to fear it - that gives it power. Bring good influences to bear upon it; make yourself a good example.

I'm always pursuing knowledge; I'm a seeker of spiritual equilibrium - and music is a big part of that.

You have to make peace with life.

I feel the older I get, the more I'm learning to handle life. Being on this quest for a long time, it's all about finding yourself.

The secret of success is to be in harmony with existence, to be always calm to let each wave of life wash us a little farther up the shore.

The most difficult thing in life is to know yourself.

I have self-actualized. Pardon me whilst I adjust my glowing halo.

I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly conflict.

You know, everybody has setbacks in their life, and everybody falls short of whatever goals they might set for themselves. That's part of living and coming to terms with who you are as a person.

Everyone's on their own journey and nothing's going to happen overnight and you're going to have ups and you're going to have downs, but I think that you need to be content with your own journey and find what works for you.

Unlike Frank Sinatra, I have no regrets in my life. Zero. Whatever hardships I have faced, or have caused myself, are moments I have to embrace in order to move forward. I have no problem coming to grips with either the highs or lows in my life.

I know who I am. And after all these years, there's a victory in that.

I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together make me.

I am what I wanted and I want what I am.

You did the best you could," and she seemed to believe I had. I said, "I've just been going through the motions," using the expression my father had after he'd watched my first tennis lesson. "Sweetie," she said, "that's what a lot of life is.

I can't make anybody happy, so I try my best to be good at what I do

I exist as I am, that is enough, If no other in the world be aware I sit content, And if each and all be aware I sit content. One world is aware, and by the far the largest to me, and that is myself, And whether I come to my own today or in ten thousand or ten million years, I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness, I can wait.

But I am learning that perfection isn't what matters. In fact, it's the very thing that can destroy you if you let it.

Balance. It was all about balance. That had been one of the first things that she had learned: the centre of the seesaw has neither up nor down, but upness and downness flow through it while it remains unmoved. You had to be the centre of the seesaw so the pain flowed through you, not into you. It was very hard. But she could do it!

You're in a fight and have to dig down... I find peace in that and enjoy it.

I'm not very good at being alive. Sometimes I despair of ever mastering it, getting it right. When I'm old, perhaps.

You must not for one instant give up the effort to build new lives for yourselves. Creativity means to push open the heavy, groaning doorway to life. This is not an easy struggle. Indeed, it may be the most difficult task in the world, for opening the door to your own life is, in the end, more difficult than opening the doors to the mysteries of the universe.

I'm not really struggling about my career. The struggles are in my personal life. I can't really pinpoint how long it took me to get where I'm at, and I didn't care how long it was going to take, because it's not about the destination, it's about the journey.

One must never be either content with, or impatient with, oneself.